To most, Machado was known as Fumar, Smoke. He was given the moniker on account of both his profession and his light-skinned complexion. To others, he was known by another name, one whispered on the breaths of dead men. To those who had met him at their life's end, Jose Machado was known as El Vibora, The Viper.
He dusted the top of his hat and hung it on the coatrack near the door. The smell of eggs and peppers greeted him, and it pleased Machado to know Maria was awake. At seventeen, she tended to him more as a wife than a daughter, but only in the platonic sense of domestic responsibility. It was initially why he'd taken the girl. But over time, he'd come to see her as more than a servant girl.
The girl he'd saved from the hellhole of a life that she was destined for five years ago had become in time as much a daughter as any flesh and blood ever could be. Machado, unable to father a family of his own, found himself a bachelor, but Maria completed him, gave his life a purpose beyond its purpose, and a new perspective.
He rounded the corner of the short hallway and entered the kitchen where the smell intensified. He was pleasantly surprised by the plate of Chorizo cooling on the stove. Maria cracked an egg into the pan just as Machado walked in. She breezed across the kitchen floor as if walking on air. Then, with the grace of a prima ballerina, simultaneously dropped the eggshells in the trash and laid a kiss upon his cheek before pirouetting her way back to the stove.
"My flower," he said. "It smells delicious."
"Have a seat, papa. I'll have a plate to you shortly. It's your favorite."
There were four seats at the small round table, but they typically favored only two. He sat in his and only had to wait a moment before Maria brought the plate. She nudged the drawing she'd been working on. From the looks of it, it was a lily blooming in springtime with the last droplet of morning's dew dangling at the edge of its light purple petals.
When Machado found Maria those five years ago, the home she was in was littered in the drawings, as was his now. Every time he returned from one of his “business trips,” she greeted him with a new illustration, sometimes several new ones depending on how long he was gone.
Machado waited patiently until Maria was seated. The two let the food cool. And in the quiet that settled over the table and its occupants, the two took hands and prayed. His arms were almost as thin as the girl's across from him, one of the lasting effects leftover from a rattlesnake bite he’d received as a child.
As a young boy, Machado's bird-like physique cost him ridicule and abuse in both verbal and physical forms. That was before they saw past his pale, lanky body and hunched shoulders, making him look more vulture than boy, and saw that he was not actually a vulture at all. But instead, a viper.
Machado felt then, as he still did now, that in the brutal moment when the rattlesnake seared him with its venom, a transfer had occurred. In that transfer of blood and venom when the two were joined, Machado believed a communion between man and serpent took place. His destiny had been laid at his feet on his fourth birthday.
His first memory outside of the infantile amnesia boundary line in his memory was of the time he was bitten by the rattlesnake. He believed that day marked his spiritual rebirth into the world. His re-emergence came with its own personal spirit guide whose menacing rattle and slithering tongue called to him and showed him his path, one he'd been walking since that day.
It is why Machado still wrapped its leathered skin around his. The rattle of the snake that bit him still dangled its warning loosely outside of the white button-up dress shirt, cinched tight at the collar by the turquoise bolo necktie his father had worn, and the sun-faded black blazer and wide-brimmed hat of similar color and wear. Two of the items he wore had cost the life of their wearer. No matter how hard he had scrubbed, Machado couldn't get all of the blood out of the cracks and crevices of the snakeskin and necktie. And in just the right light, he could still see the stain of it. The bloody talismans served as an important milestone in Machado's life. It's when he, at the early age of nine, first killed a man.
A thief had broken in through the window in his family's home and slit his father's throat while stealing a necktie he wasn't even wearing. The thief then killed his mother, but not before the horrible things she had to endure while laying in her dead husband's blood. Things Machado endured while he watched, hiding in the hallway pantry across from the opened door of his parent’s bedroom when the burglar first entered. He’d tried and failed to block the sights and sounds.
On that day, Machado felt that he had died. The serpent whose blood pulsed through his veins swallowed his soul whole.
And on that day, a boy of nine gave himself over to the snake's power. He no longer hunched his shoulders to hide himself as he skulked about. He stood erect. He remained thin and pale. And the hat kept the promise his father had made when giving it to him. The shade continued to shield his trigger eye from the light.
The neighborhood boys stopped teasing after seeing the young Machado wandering the streets draped in his dead father's clothes. As he grew into those clothes, so did the stories of his legend.
The shake of the rattle dangling from his wrist drew an unholy fear. When he was young this had not been so because he wore it for its intended purpose, using it as a belt. As he grew past the belt's last notch, Machado, refusing to separate himself from the talisman, wrapped it around his left wrist. And there it had remained.
He secretly found amusement in the truth that what people feared most about him was built with love and worn in honor of it.